The fact that the 9th of October 2019 in Halle would be a day of remembrance had long been clear. Exactly thirty years ago, in front of the centuries-old Marktkirche in the old town, the people here peacefully demonstrated for a system change in the GDR until police forcefully intervened.
But a planned film screening on Wednesday evening, together with eyewitness conversation, will be canceled at short notice, because another event overshadows the day of remembrance. At noon, two people were killed and others injured in an attack on the city's Jewish community in Saxony-Anhalt.
According to SPIEGEL information, the alleged perpetrator is the 27-year-old Stephan B. from Saxony-Anhalt. A video streamed live by him shows him shooting a passerby near the Jewish cemetery and a guest in a kebab snack near the synagogue (you can find out more about the background here).
Video: "Like a ghost town"
MIRROR ONLINE
From the video, there are also clear references to the subject. "We assume a right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic motivation to act," a spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor's Office said to SPIEGEL. The suspect was arrested during the afternoon.
In the evening, only the police cars on the street corners of the old town and the echoing sound of sirens remind of the dramatic events of the day. Shortly after 6 pm, the police announce that the "vulnerability situation for the population" is no longer acute.
Occasionally people rush home through the rain-soaked streets, otherwise the city center is empty. Except for the marketplace, where people flock to a small block of metal, only a few, then finally a few hundred.
The metal block, a so-called geoscope, is supposed to indicate a geological feature in the area. On this evening, he serves as a shrine on which the Halle residents put dozens of candles and flowers. With the crowd, it's almost ghostly quiet, here and there people mumble "Why?" or "I do not understand it", others hug each other.
Then someone takes the floor: Valentin Hacken, law student and spokesman for "Halle gegen Rechts". The Alliance has called for the vigilance at short notice. Hacken explains that no speeches are planned, it should be a silent prayer.
Silence against hatred
The moment you realize: The most important thing is that people do not have to be alone with their thoughts. Like the man who carries an Israeli flag over his shoulders and stares at the flickering candlelight. For an hour he remains almost motionless. The shock is deep in the Hallensern.
"What happened today made many of us stunned and shocked, which was an incredible amount of brutality with which the offender or perpetrators went there," says Hacken the SPIEGEL. It could have been much worse. Because the perpetrator apparently tried to penetrate into the synagogue in Paulusviertel, where on the highest Jewish holiday Yom Kippur about 70 to 80 people were. He failed at the secured door.
The student Matthias Bille lives near the crime scene. After work, he often gets a kebab in the shop where a man was shot on Wednesday afternoon. At the time Bille is home, a friend sends him a photo, on which the victim is to be seen. "That was really crazy," says the 25-year-old and struggling for composure.
But he not only feels grief, there is anger, disgust for the perpetrator. "My mind is simply not clear why he did that - and if it's not in my head, how should it go to the victims' families?"
"Show that we are more"
Sophie Winter, who has been living in Halle for almost four years, has a similar view. The young mother could not bring her child out of the day care center for hours because the police did not give the all clear. The vigil makes her courage, she sees many familiar faces. Winter also says: "That you go out of the house and there is such a heaviness over the district, I've never experienced this here." Even Kathrin Dinebier, who moved to Halle in the nineties, was deeply disturbed when she heard about the attack: "I thought: That does not happen in our provincial city of Halle."
But not all participants of the vigil know the city so well. The 21-year-old Lea-Marie has just been in Halle for two days, and next week begins her first semester at Martin Luther University. "I am here to show sympathy and that we are more," she says. Her fellow student Leon has just moved into an apartment in a side street of the attacked synagogue. He stayed there while the mission was in progress. "That was pretty scary," he says.
The situation is similar for Peter Kubiak, a native of Halle, who lived close to the synagogue until a few years ago. "It's all the harder the closer it gets to you," says Kubiak. He stood in the same place exactly thirty years ago, at the time praying for peace. On Wednesday night, he says, "I did not think there could be events that would shake you up again - just in a different way."
